The Retail Manifesto

From my novel "The People's Republic of Retail". As things begin to unravel at Mega Mart, despotic store manager Bill Cox doubles down on meting out punishment in an effort to quell the oncoming rebellion. Eric George, as a suspected ringleader, is suspended (exiled) for two weeks. He sits down at his manual typewriter and begins typing out what will become known as "The Retail Manifesto".

The Retail Manifesto

Part I.

    We are the ghost generation. We are the hidden mechanism that runs your service economy. We are the spectral hands that stock your bread & milk - your staples. We are the expired student I.d. generation - forced to work menial jobs for minimum wage. We are a generation stunted by debt - held back from our greater aspirations by maxed out credit cards and high interest rate loans.

   
You lured us in, before we had a chance, with the promise of things we couldn't afford, and now we are stuck making french fries - sweeping floors - and selling your gasoline. We have been locked in a prison cell whose only key is submission. We have a name for our prison. We call it Retail!

Part II.

    We are the wage slaves. America's forgotten sons and daughters, trapped behind WAL's (sic). You see a big box - we see a gulag. You see low prices - we see the true cost in the precious blood & sweat of foreign children. Children who should be in school rather than manufacturing things that could be made in American factories by American workers paid decent wages. You see economic development - we see urban sprawl & the death of the middle class. You find comfort in the monotony of suburbia - we are wondering, "where is our American dream?"

Part III.

    The corporations have become tyrannies - ruling vicariously through media outlets that spread more lies & misinformation than news, through politicians bought & paid for, through political action groups who capitalize on fear & hysteria to get the populace to vote against their own self interests. Did you know that the money squandered on wars and disinformation could pay for universal health care and education for all - several times over? These robber barons and their stooges spend more to oppress public initiatives than it would cost to allow them to just pass. It’s time to wake up - strike torches - and burn our way through the web of lies that protects the rich while crushing the poor and working classes!

Part IV.

    We have been in a coma - turned into zombies by corn syrup and Ritalin and anti-depressants. We medicate ourselves into a stupor to hide from the bleak realities of roles we didn't choose but were lead to like cattle down a chute to the slaughterhouse floor. I say we face the world awake - with our eyes wide open! We don't need more medicine. The situation is depressing. Only when we face this inescapable fact - consciously, can we effect real change!

Part V.

    We are beginning to rise from our slumber. There are those of us - inside the machine, who are sounding the alarm. We were educated inside your institutions despite your best efforts. You cut taxes for the rich while slashing public education perennially. But in spite of it all we have uncovered the truth. We have read the banned books. We have learned the story of labour movements - excised from our history books. We know - now, that our world has fallen to shadow. It has come to pass, as Orwell prophesyed, that all the hard won advances now lay rusting across the landscape, the promises abandoned like Midwestern factories, the ghosts of prosperity reflected in shattered windows and ivy-entwined brick. The once mighty cities have fallen - like mythic civilizations, into modern day ruins. Detroit - Cleveland - Allentown - Baltimore - Flint: Once they were citadels of enlightenment & culture - now infested by drugs & poverty. How could so much promise be wiped away, and for what? To make room for big chains? Multi-National conglomerates bringing forth low wages - poor benefits, and big box blight? It doesn't have to be that way. The future is not yet written. We have a choice. We can wrest control of these monstrosities, and against all odds, we can rebuild the dream!

Part VI.

    You cannot run from accountability. You who have hidden behind a flag made in China. You who have shouted down opposition with empty gestures of patriotism - while justifying the deaths of scores of young men on foreign battlefields. Did you ever notice that in war, only the blood of the young gets spilled? I say no more! The real war is here! It's time for us to rise up and heed the call!

    
Individually, we can be defeated. But united, we are a revolution! Like a million trees growing out of the cracks of American sidewalks, we will fight and persevere. The goliaths of greed will fall and on their foundations we will till the soil of a better tomorrow!

Today Mega-Mart!

Tomorrow the World!

Eric George

Labor Day